Leadership and Team Building

Note: The following work reflects my role in a team setting as a leader and effective communicator, my connection between writers and editors, and my inclusion of all staff members to create a family-like environment.

About: As a Department Aide for the City of Irvine through the Youth Action Team, I am a lead representative to communicate with a board of directors and to inform them of the requests and needs of high school students. My leadership skills helped to encourage the youth to have a voice and to become contributing members of society. My work through the city helped to give teenagers a role in the changes that are made to their schools, parks and neighborhoods. This connects to my work with journalism because without having ben on my newspaper team, I would not have ben informed of this opportunity.

"Club founder and president"

(Meeting held on September 30, 2015 at Irvine High School and published on Twitter (@PaperHeartsIHS)

About: After over 150 students signed up for the Paper Hearts club at our school's annual Club Fair, I put on our first meeting and introduced its purpose, agenda and goals. After starting up this club and combining my love for writing along with my heart to help others, it has branched out to other high schools and students have cumulatively written over 2,000 letters.

Through increased popularity of emails and instant messages, handwritten letters have become less common. Taking the time to handwrite a letter and deliver it to an individual has been deemed an ancient pastime. I wanted to rejuvenate the feeling of opening a handwritten letter addressed to oneself – the feeling of being appreciated and worthy of another person’s time. That’s why I became the founder and president of the club Paper Hearts.

​"Advertisement manager"

(El Vaquero newspaper - posted on Facebook)

About: As the advertisement manager of the El Vaquero newspaper, I act as a liaison between writers, editors and advertisement merchants. I have learned to communicate effectively to encourage the selling of ads with merchants and to ensure that there is available space to place the advertisement with page editors. We have a Facebook group with all of our journalism staff members where updates are posted. I utilized this platform to remind members to sell advertisements.

"Page editor"

(El Vaquero newspaper - text message conversation with staff writer)

About: After giving writers their story assignments, there is often confusion on the angle and approach in which it should be written. In this case, there were two different teachers being featured for the same award so it made for a confusing assignment. After communicating between staff writers and myself as an editor, we reached clarity.

"Diversity audit for El Vaquero"

(Reviewed and compiled for the December 2016 issue of El Vaquero)

About: After every publication, as a part of post-production activities we compile a list of sources used for stories and photos. Then we create statistics and data to show the number of females, males, freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors we used. We also categorize our sources into sections to calculate if we are equally using and interviewing all races. This is used to ensure that we are representing our population as a whole and not using too many sources multiple times. ​

"Team bonding"

(First day of school bonding activity 2017 -- El Vaquero newspaper)

About: Every year during the summer the board of editors for the El Vaquero newspaper, we meet to discuss plans and goals for the upcoming school year. In order to create a family-like dynamic with a trusting environment, we incorporate bonding activities during the first week of school to welcome new members and rejoice with old members. This year, we decided to paint bird houses together and hang them up to remind us that the journalism room too, is a home.